t the end of the Far North American wing of the tour, in Anchorage, we had been driving for so long that we no longer looked, smelled, nor acted human. There was nothing to read but Louis L'Amour at the Vancouver Hilton. The tape deck, somewhere outside of Vancouver, jammed so that it could no longer eject the tape, which was Are You Experienced? backed with Purple Rain.

We gave a great show in Anchorage. I remember that I humped a shelf of kids’ books, moaning obscenely, while Scott read the “Meddlesome Passenger,” while simultaneously playing an electric guitar solo, or maybe I imagined the electric guitar solo. Dirk read part of the New Modern Library Edition Gertrude Stein Reader, and then he set it on fire and knelt down before the burning trade paperback, gesticulating erotically, as the crowd looked on baffled.

We spent a little jail time in Anchorage.